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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26297377">The Wind Through The Window</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaysyourqueen/pseuds/alwaysyourqueen'>alwaysyourqueen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A few headcanons baked in like Rachel being a soccer player, Character Study, F/M, Mostly about Rachel and some Rachel/Tobias, Rachel Character Study feat. Tobias</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:00:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,499</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26297377</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaysyourqueen/pseuds/alwaysyourqueen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel Berenson is thirteen, and she does not know who she is.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rachel (Animorphs)/Tobias (Animorphs)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Wind Through The Window</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my first animorphs piece and is my take on a Rachel character study. It's only with knowledge up until the beginning of book 7, so no spoilers! (I know a few, but this is also from the perspective of around that time period.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Honestly? Rachel had lost track of the time. Time since the construction site, and the night where her life had permanently changed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She would never be the person she had been before. She used to care a lot about looking good all the time, and winning games in soccer. She used to care about getting all As and thinking about her identity and going shopping. Now, she might enjoy shopping, or dressing up once in a while, and playing soccer might be good relief. But she wasn’t that Rachel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel Berenson was sitting at her desk, cheek pressed hard into one hand as she drew her pencil over her paper. The paper was actually her math homework, with two problems done on a paper meant to hold eighteen. But homework didn’t have the same importance to her, so she doodled a little bird in the corner. To anyone else, it would just seem like her imagination was very active. Or she had a newfound interest in biology. In truth, she was drawing Tobias from memory. She certainly spent enough time with him as a red-tailed hawk to be able to conjure his image without much trouble. The curve of his talons, the texture of his wings. It was all second nature to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Despite her mom’s insistence on shutting the window whenever she came into the room, Rachel had taken to leaving it open. A cool breeze came through the room, unsettling the stray strands of hair around her head. It sent a shiver down her spine, pulling her out of her cycle of thoughts to notice that her room was cool. Not cool like she might have a few months ago, but cool as in she might benefit from a blanket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The real reason she left the window open so often was that she wanted Tobias to feel welcome without having to announce his approach. He could thought-speak to her just fine, but it still felt antisocial to shut him out. It wasn’t as if he had his own bedroom to go to, or his own house to watch TV in. Rachel couldn’t even imagine not having somewhere to go home to. That would mean not seeing her sisters, or her mom, or having phone calls with her dad.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The person she was now had to worry about more than just homework. She was fighting a battle, day in and day out. Secretly, she was terrified of what she was becoming. She loved the fighting and the conflict. It gave her the kind of purpose she lacked in her everyday life. A higher calling, one that finally tore away from the shallow surface she lived under. She had to bring herself back to reality. Math homework. A reality that could so easily come crumbling down when the yeerks finished their invasion. Sending more of their slugs into people’s brains, and enslaving all of humanity. Crushing the diversity of their lives and simply turning them into bodies to serve their terrible empire. Ironically, her reality was the one that involved not doing math homework in favor of resting as much as possible between missions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel set her pencil down on the desk, letting out a sigh as she rubbed her eyes with her hands. Her gaze drifted past the alarm clock, neon green numbers reading 8:47, to the open window, and she pulled her legs up to her chest. She tucked her knees under her chin, looking out at the night sky. The sky that quietly, secretly held the enemies of the animorphs, the enemies of all humankind. It was a lot for someone to handle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Easier for her to handle when she had a target to hit. Harder when it felt like anyone could hurt her at any moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She heard distant words in her house. Probably Mom trying to get Sara to go to bed. Jordan had homework too, and wouldn’t be downstairs watching TV unless it was finished. Rachel remembered all the times she’d helped get Sara into bed. Wrangling with a little sister until she relented and slept. The words got louder, then quieter. She hadn’t noticed the background noise of the TV in the distance, but it stopped, and the house was quiet again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She let herself stretch out, spinning around in her chair to look at the mirror across the room. That mirror was the mirror she saw herself morph in, the few times she morphed in her room. She didn’t do it much. Her cat morph, more than once. Nothing like stretching out in front of a window on a sunny day as a cat. (With a clock set for a 2 hour alarm.) The mirror stood next to her bureau, that held many clothes she didn’t wear anymore. Or only wore for her family’s sake. The most important pieces of clothing to her now were her leotards and black leggings. The only things that protected her when she morphed. Nothing was free of morphing and the war. Everything was a part of it. School was a place to get information that would help, or to spy on the assistant principal. Home was something to be protected. She kept her animorph life as far away from Jordan, Sara, her mom, and her dad as she could manage. She didn’t want them to deal with it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even her romantic feelings. She tried to ignore it, most days, but she hadn’t had a crush on anyone in a while. Her feelings for Cassie had always been there, as long as they’d been friends. Being in love with your best friend isn’t a curable disease. And when she finally had feelings for someone else, it threw her whole sense of identity out of whack. She’d spent years figuring out that she liked girls, and only girls. She didn’t tell anyone (except Jake, and he was sworn to secrecy), but she had been pretty okay with the whole only-girls thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there was Tobias. He was a bird now, but he had once had dreamy eyes and the sort of voice that carried you away. Let you dream. Now, all of his softness was inside. Buried beneath feathers and talons that killed. It was hard to deal with crushing on a bird. It was worse when she’d finally dealt with her feelings about liking girls, and now she was liking a guy again. It didn’t matter, though. They had to be soldiers first, and teenagers second. Jake and Cassie had the emotional range to maybe be something. Rachel wasn’t sure she could both deal with trying to have feelings and fight the yeerks. She wasn’t good with feelings at the best of times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Getting up from her chair, she went over to the dresser and opened a drawer. Half of it was cleanly folded shirts, untouched in…she didn’t know how long. The other half was t-shirts and tank tops she’d taken to wearing. She still could look nice, wearing a jacket and carrying a clean bag. But people could tell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She closed the drawer again and opened her pajama drawer. She grabbed a tank top and shorts. Stripping away her jeans and t-shirt, she stood for a minute, wearing nothing but her underwear. It was weird because she felt even more naked than she might have in the past. Her default state now was morphing clothes, and being without them felt like she was defenseless. She slipped on her pajamas and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was strewn about her head, in a way she never would have stood for a year earlier. Now, others would see a bad or off hair day. Rachel knew she’d brush it in the morning. The girl in the mirror could be any number of teenage girls. Just looking at her, in star-patterned shorts and a purple tank top, you would never know she had killed aliens and stomped cars as an elephant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Hey, Rachel, am I interrupting?&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel jumped, grasping at her chest. She hadn’t expected the sudden soundless speech in her mind. She was used to it as a form of communication, but usually she was more prepared for it. She’d forgotten she left the window open. Her hands dropped to her sides as she turned around and looked towards her window. Sitting on the windowsill was a bird. From talon to head, about two feet, give or take. Pretty brown feathers, with red tail feathers. Sharp eyes to match a sharp beak. Tobias’ red-tailed hawk morph, though it would be more accurate to say Tobias, the red-tailed hawk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I was kinda hoping you’d drop by.” She walked back over to her desk chair, sitting down as Tobias hopped from the windowsill to the desk. “I have to be a bit quiet.” She raised a hand, silently asking for permission to have physical contact. Tobias’ head gently bowed towards her, the quiet communication the two of them had sort of developed in the weeks of spending time together outside of official animorph business. Or even just group activities. Her fingers patted down on the feathers atop his head, a gentle stroke of affection.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;You seemed sorta upset earlier. I wanted to see if you were okay.&gt; His voice didn’t make a sound anymore. Nothing about him made a sound if he didn’t want it to. There was still inflection, a sound quote-en-quote, in her mind. It was comforting, to her, that she still experienced human Tobias in that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel twisted in her chair, bending her toes over one another. “Just been thinking a lot.” Her free hand found the shoulder strap of her shirt and tugged on it. “About…stuff.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Yeah.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stuff” was the best way to sum it up. All five of them (six if you counted Ax, but he didn’t have the same interruption to normalcy that the human animorphs did) struggled to encapsulate what it really meant to be living this life. Nights like this were more and more common.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;You wanna talk about it?&gt; Tobias tilted his head, and it felt to Rachel like he was nuzzling her hand. Hawks aren’t built for affection, but he had practice at this point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel sighed. She drew her fingers through her hair, catching on a knot and tugging through it with only mild scalp pain. She wasn’t one to shrink away from conflict, especially not from a fight. On the other hand, she was allergic to feelings. “No.” The breeze from outside came in again, and Rachel watched while Tobias ruffled his feathers. She knew from experience how satisfying it could be to just get a good fluffing of feathers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Withdrawing her hand, Rachel got up from her desk and went to sit on her bed. “I’m tired.” She sprawled out her limbs on the bed, letting her breath out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;I could let you sleep.&gt; Tobias turned his fierce gaze on Rachel as she lounged, his yellow eyes standing out in the low night light. &lt;Though I can’t hunt right now. I can’t see anything without better moonlight.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want you here.” After having the company, Rachel was afraid of going back to being alone with her thoughts. She’d spent too many hours stuck in her head, starting on math homework that wasn’t going to get finished, thinking about the desire to fight. “If you don’t mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Sure.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Silence fell into the room again. It wasn’t hard to be quiet when she wasn’t talking. If it weren’t for her sisters and her mom, she’d invite Tobias to stay the night. She wanted to sleep and have him there when she woke up. But her mom would freak out when she found a full grown red-tailed hawk in her bedroom, and that would raise too many questions. Not to mention that Tobias needed to hunt a lot. It would be a pain to wake up as soon as the sun came up to let him out to eat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How long had it been? Her eyes went to the clock again. It now read 9:02. Sleeping would mean dreams, but maybe she could deal with that. For now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for checking on me,” she finally said, breaking the half-comfortable half-upsetting silence. “I mean it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Anytime.&gt; Tobias fluffed his wings again, and gave another of his little hops towards the window. &lt;I’ll see you tomorrow after school.&gt;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel wants to ask Tobias to come to school during the day. So she can at least hear his voice during lunch, or see him flying overhead. But she knows it can’t happen. It wouldn’t be safe for either of them. It could compromise the entire group, to have anything connecting them. Everything had to be about keeping them all safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Goodnight, Tobias.” She got up and walked back to the window, putting one hand on the frame, and the other giving a gentle stroke along his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;Goodnight, Rachel.&gt; The hawk took wing and flew out the window, which Rachel shut behind him. The air in her room felt still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rachel turned off the lights, crawling on all fours across her bed before tucking under the covers. The warmth of the blanket wasn’t enough to break the chill that had baked itself into her skin. Not a physical sensation, but the weight of who she was and what she was doing. She stared at the ceiling, a sea of milky blackness spread across her field of vision. Her legs wiggled, and she turned to her side to look towards the bedside table. 9:13. She flipped to her other side again. She shifted, her hair strewn about her pillow and needing to be pushed out of her face. Her arms went limp, finding their niche to slip in for the night’s rest</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a little bit, her thoughts went to “normal” things. How her homework wasn’t done, and that would be another missing or incomplete assignment, depending on what she did in the morning. Her mom would be worried when she found out, which would probably be when progress reports were sent out. Unlike a year ago, her chest didn’t clench, and her mind didn’t swim with anxiety. Instead, she just resigned herself to having to keep it under the radar long enough to be able to worry about it. Plus, it wasn’t as if she’d have to worry about her grades if she died on an animorph mission between now and then. Who knew if it would ever be a real problem, anyways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wasn’t sure which Rachel she felt like, right now. The one who went shopping and scored winning goals for the soccer team, or the one who risked her life to save the planet. She didn’t feel much like Rachel at all. Just a girl trying to go to sleep. The girl in the mirror was the person who was wearing Rachel’s clothes. Sleeping in Rachel’s bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whoever it was, she shut her eyes. Somehow, she fell asleep.</span>
</p>
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